The future of Billy in LA Zoo at stake - busy times during lecture and fundraising tour in California
Category: 1. General News, Elephants in captivity, Events | Date: Nov 20 2008 | By: elephantvoices
After almost two weeks on the road with several events and fundraisers behind us, we depart from California and Los Angeles this afternoon. We’re busy packing so we don’t have time for more than a very short summary of our trip.
The tour started with a cooking party and two other events in San Francisco, continued with a joint event at PAWS in San Andreas. You can see a video from this event here, including footage of Joyce’s talk and of the responses of Ruby, Maggie, Mara and Lulu to some elephant sounds that we played to them. Their response was so strong that some people were worried that the sounds were upsetting to the girls. While it may be rare for captive elephants to react so strongly to a stimulus, the responses were very typical of wild elephants and we were able to observe a range of responses from high social excitement to fierce defence. Their response showed just what a strong leader Ruby has becomes and how tight the bonds are between the four elephants. PAWS can be extremely proud of the work they have done to facilitate the development of this family unit.
We finally had an event and fundraiser in the home of a good friend in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, on Sunday 16th November.
Georja Umano, Petter and Joyce
The last three days of our visit ended up being much more hectic than planned, mainly because of meetings and press briefings related to our involvement in discussions regarding the future of elephants, including Billy, at LA Zoo. On Tuesday Joyce participated in a press conference arranged by councilman Tony Cardenas of Los Angeles County Council. NBC Los Angeles, CBS Los Angeles and dailybreeze.com, laist and Fox LA are among the media that have covered the case. The vote was planned for Wednesday, but after 5 intense hours on the floor it has been delayed until the first week of December. (Article in LA Times here) We strongly hope the LA County Council will decide to close the exhibit and send Billy to a sanctuary. An urban zoo cannot offer the space necessary for a such a large, active, social, and intelligent animal as the elephant.
Petter, Joyce and Councilman Tony Cardenas visiting LA Zoo.
We’re extremely grateful for all the support and help we have received during our trip - it’s been exhausting but has also given us lots of new energy. We have made new friends, even some through WildlifeDirect, and hopefully created more compassion for elephants among people that we have met on our way. We look forward to keeping in touch with all of you caring for elephants.
Thanks!
Petter and Joyce
Tags: billy, elephants, elephantvoices, fundraiser, los angeles
Ringling case delayed
Category: 1. General News, Elephants in captivity | Date: Oct 25 2008 | By: elephantvoices
A few hours after Joyce arrived in Washington DC she got the message that the court case mentioned in last posting is delayed, and that it may be set to spring 2009. Flying from Norway to Washington and back in 3 days isn’t the best way to spend a long weekend - but not much to do…
Joyce in court in Washington DC
Category: 1. General News, Elephants in captivity | Date: Oct 24 2008 | By: elephantvoices
Having been prepared for 8 years the lawsuit against Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus and Feld Entertainment (Ringling Brothers) for violations of the U.S. Endangered Species Act, is finally going to trial starting Monday, 27 October, 2008. The suit is brought by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, The Animal Welfare Institute, The Fund for Animals, The Animal Protection Institute, and a former Ringling Brothers’ employee, Tom Rider, who worked as a barn man with the elephants for two and a half years.
Joyce is an expert witness in the trial for the plaintiffs and is scheduled to testify on Monday. The case is being heard in federal court in Washington DC, in courtroom 24A, and is expected to last for approximately three weeks. The court proceedings are open to the public.
Tags: "elephant welfare", elephants, elephantvoices, poole
Wherever they are - elephants need our support
Category: 1. General News, 4. Welfare News, Elephant Photos, Elephants in captivity, Elephants in the wild | Date: Aug 27 2008 | By: elephantvoices
TheTeach has inspired me to post a few reflections based on our post Elephant welfare - how much do we care?, and her comments afterwards. What each and one of us have to do is to decide what we believe in - which values we want to stand and fight for - which attitudes we want to show towards other creatures like elephants. But we in the industrialized world can afford to think like this. In many poor countries millions of people have a different reality in their everyday life - they’re struggling to survive. Human-elephant conflicts and destruction of habitat often symbolizes that we’re not able to accept certain limitations in terms of resources and land - and that local politicians and the global community not have been able to find the balance between the needs of people and other animals. Bad governance, corruption and lack of land use planning and/or it’s implementation are often strongly contributing factors, but let me not go into that. It’s “unpolitical” to talk about the lack of political drive worldwide to discuss and deal with the human population growth, but from my perspective this topic will have to come higher on the agenda if we want to keep elephants (and other wildlife) for future generations. Poverty reduction is another key, closely connected to population growth. Elephants are certainly also about tourism and revenue, and thereby work places and economical growth, so in principle we would all gain on conserving them.
OK - let me stay out of more politics for now - and go back to some of TheTeach’s comments. Since Thailand introduced anti-logging laws in 1988/89 many elephants have ended up on the streets with their mahouts. I do agree that many mahouts have a close and compassionate relationship with their elephants, but it is also a fact that the methods used to “break” the elephant to get them to do what’s expected in the first place is brutal and unacceptable from an elephant welfare perspective. Some projects are working on getting street-elephants or abused elephants back to semi wild conditions - we visited one of these projects a couple of years ago. One very interesting aspect with this particular project is that they employ and retrain the mahouts as field staff, to secure them a job and also make the transition for the elephants more easy. Another remark: Thailand probably have around 3,000 captive (so called domesticated) elephants today, and less than 2,000 wild, compared to respectively 11,000 and 30,000 fifty years ago. But such figures and percentages are symbolic for the destiny of the elephant also elsewhere.
Asian elephant with hair style like me…
We do agree with TheTeach that there should be more efforts going into elephant protection and conservation in Asia, which is one reason why we are in the process of expanding our scope to include both African and Asian elephants. And we will for sure expand our WD blog to include our new project - so TheTeach and others can follow it.
Male elephant flirting with several females in Minneriya National Park, Sri Lanka.
Keep up your efforts TheTeach and others fighting for elephants - they need our help!
Best wishes, Petter
Tags: africa, baby elephant, behavior, behaviour, bull, Bulls, calf, elephants, elephantvoices, Musth, thailand
Elephant welfare - how much do we care?
Category: 1. General News, 4. Welfare News, Elephants in captivity | Date: Jul 24 2008 | By: elephantvoices
Every day we receive messages about how captive elephants are being treated, often with disturbing photos or video footage. A mission of ElephantVoices is to promote responsibility for securing a kinder future for elephants. Our aim is to do this is primarily through education - by inspiring wonder in the intelligence, complexity and voices of elephants - rather than jumping on one campaign after another. We are a small team and we are not able to take on individual battles for each and every elephant. But sometimes we feel compelled to make our opinions known and below is an example. It’s a letter to journalist, Robert Wilonsky in The Dallas Observer e-mailed today, as a response to his request for Joyce to comment on video footage (linked below) of elephants in Africam Safari Zoo in Mexico where the Dallas Zoo plans to send their elephant Jenny.
Dear Robert
The music is hauntingly beautiful and put to the swaying of confined elephants brought tears to my eyes. Why do we humans feel such a need to confine and control other animals? Is our pleasure in seeing them worth the cruelty that we inflict on them? Elephants are intelligent socially complex individuals who have the same basic needs that we have: Freedom and autonomy, companionship and affection, just to name a few.
The first elephant in the video looks very unhealthy; she is too thin; all of the elephants in the video are swaying - a behavior only seen in confined elephants. Like so many captive elephants they are bored and frustrated with nowhere to go and no one to see, no new smells to investigate and nothing to strive for. The result is standing in one place and rocking, slowly losing their minds. Well, wouldn’t we do the same given similar circumstances? I often try to put myself in the elephants’ shoes, so to speak. Ever had to stand for hours and hours alone waiting for that bus that never comes? Feet and back aching? I, too, start to step from one foot to the other. I, too, rock back and forth, I sway. But I don’t wait for a bus for days, for weeks, for months, for years. I have the freedom to choose to go.
We need to wake up to the reality of what we are doing to other creatures and stop hiding behind a lot of constructed arguments for keeping elephants in this way.
Jenny should go to a sanctuary.
Regards, Joyce Poole
Tags: behavior, behaviour, elephants, elephantvoices, jenny, welfare
Joyce to DC - Ringling case getting close
Category: 1. General News, 4. Welfare News, Elephants in captivity | Date: Jul 23 2008 | By: elephantvoices
In August Joyce will travel to Washington DC to give her deposition in the case against Ringling Brothers for its treatment of elephants. Preparations have taken literally months of work. Joyce is also likely to go back in October when the court case takes place.
The basis for all of the contributions we make toward the interests of elephants is our long term studies of wild elephants. Some people try to argue that elephants held captive are different from wild elephants because they are domesticated. There are two uses of the term domesticated - one meaning “of the household” and the other a biological one. It is the biological one that is important and in this sense there is no such thing as domesticated elephants. All species of modern elephants are capable of being - and routinely have been - habituated and tamed by humans. They remain, nevertheless, wild animals.
The traditional bullhook used to control an elephant in Thailand (Photo credit Robert Poole). ElephantVoices’ standpoint is that this instrument contributes to misery for elephants held captive, for with it elephants are trained and controlled.
Tags: elephants, elephantvoices, welfare
Elephants in zoos - or not?
Category: 1. General News, 4. Welfare News, Elephants in captivity | Date: Apr 08 2008 | By: admin
Hi all,
There has been a lot of activity on this blog over the last few days and some of it has centered around elephants in zoos. People who love elephants have strong feelings on this topic, some for and some against zoos. There is a lot of rhetoric on both sides and much of it is not supported by the facts.
We chose our name, ElephantVoices, for two reasons - because we study the voices of elephants and because we aim to be a voice for the interests of elephants. After spending many, many years observing elephants in the wild, I think that we have a better idea than most about what elephants enjoy doing - if they are free to pursue their own activities. In our view, the traditional zoo cannot meet the interests of elephants for reasons that we have laid out in an essay we wrote entitled, Mind and Movement: Meeting the interests of elephants.
The point to remember is that we are not keeping elephants in zoos to meet their individual or collective needs, but our own. When it comes to elephants, it cannot be argued that we are breeding them in captivity as an insurance policy against extinction - since it is much more effective biologically, reproductively and economically to ensure their survival in the wild. And it is certainly better for them as individuals to live wild rather than captive lives.
We keep elephants in zoos to meet our need to see them. It may also be fair to argue that we keep them there to act as ambassadors for elephants in the wild, though based on my experience, websites and TV documentaries offer significantly more real education than do the signs at the elephant enclosures at zoos. Often the elephants we see in zoos are poor, bewildered and broken down creatures with behavior far from what we consider real elephant behavior.
So the question for us really is this: What level of individual elephant sacrifice, if you will, is OK so that we can have the pleasure of their presence in our zoos? My feeling is that we should offer elephants close to what they have in the wild - in terms of physical, mental and social stimulation. The truth is that we are far from this. There is a push to make bigger yards for elephants, but in our view these fall square kilometers (or miles) short of what is OK. The $40-60 million dollars price tag would be better spent on an advanced multi-media theatre with a webcam connected directly to a field study supported by the zoo, where a field worker frequently is on hand to introduce us to individual elephants and explain their complex lives to us. Such an elephant reality show would be true education and entertainment for people and conservation for elephants wrapped into one. The running costs would be minimal compared to what it costs to house one or a few elephants.
We’d like to add that we do not want to belittle the efforts of those trying to make a difference for individual elephants in captivity, whether they are paid or volunteers. But with the interest of elephants at heart we deeply believe that a traditional zoo cannot offer them what they deserve and need.
Trumpets, Joyce and Petter
PS: You may want to visit our FAQ about elephants in captivity on ElephantVoices.
Tags: behavior, behaviour, elephants, elephantvoices, welfare
Communication and the interests of elephants
Category: 4. Welfare News, Elephant Photos, Elephants in captivity | Date: Feb 07 2008 | By: admin
We invite you to visit the elephant elephant welfare section of ElephantVoices, which has been reorganized and improved over the last couple of weeks; new expansions will be uploaded over the course of the next few months.
Some may wonder what our elephant welfare work has to do with elephant communication or with elephant conservation, for that matter. We see this part of our work as an important application of our many years of study of elephant behavior. Decades of knowledge is useful for the advancement of science, yes, but we also want to ensure a better future for elephants, as individuals and as a species. To do that we need to educate people, to translate all the reams of data into something that the public can digest, be moved by and put into action. As acknowledged experts in the field we feel a need to speak out on their behalf.
Joyce returned from a five day trip to California on Tuesday, where she was meeting with donors and discussing a range of captive and wild elephant welfare issues. Over the next few days she will be finalising her expert witness testimony for a legal case against Ringling Brothers for the mistreatment of elephants.
Further analysis of the material collected during our playback experiments in Amboseli in December/January is also high on our to-do list.
Cheers, Petter and Joyce
Tags: africa, behavior, behaviour, bull, Bulls, elephants, elephantvoices, kenya
Legal case against Ringling Brothers Circus for mistreatment of elephants
Category: 1. General News, 4. Welfare News, Elephants in captivity | Date: Dec 10 2007 | By: admin
Hi this is Joyce again. It has been a very hectic period because we are trying to complete a year end newsletter for our friends and supporters, and also to prepare all of our playback stimulus “tapes” before we leave for the field early Friday 14th December. But I did promise to say something about the case against Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus for which I am an expert witness.
You may wonder why a scientist interested in elephant cognition, social behavior, communication and conservation gets involved in a legal case against a circus. The more that we learn about the social complexity and intelligence of elephants, the harder it is to ignore the mistreatment of them - wherever it occurs. My research and understanding of elephants in the wild has led me to advocate on behalf of both wild and captive elephants in many different forums and contexts on issues such as the ivory trade and culling, and the abuse and mistreatment of elephants used for “entertainment.”
One example of the advocacy work I do is my involvement as an expert witness in a lawsuit brought by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, The Animal Welfare Institute, The Fund for Animals, The Animal Protection Institute, and a former Ringling Brothers’ employee, Tom Rider, who worked as a barn man with the elephants for two and a half years, against Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus and Feld Entertainment (Ringling Brothers) for violations of the U.S. Endangered Species Act.
The Asian elephants used by the circus are endangered species and the consortium argues that by chaining elephants and using bullhooks on them Ringling Brothers is violating U.S. law, which prohibits any conduct that “takes” an endangered species. A “take” constitutes acts that harm, wound, injure, harass, or kill an endangered species and applies to animals in captivity, as well as those in the wild. The lawsuit claims that Ringling Brothers “takes” Asian elephants through the forceful use of bullhooks and other instruments on the elephants and through the confinement and chaining of the elephants for long periods of time. The case is expected to go to trial in 2008.
I hope to get back online before we depart with an example of one of the MP3 files that we will be playing back to elephants….so check back in the next couple of days!
Trumpets!
Joyce
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